Poppy Picture, Card and Bunting

18th May 2015

While I was having a little tidy in my loft space I found 2 picture frames which I had forgotten about!

Decided to make a poppy picture......

.....hand dyed silk, scrim and green hessian...

.....after some free machining and hand stitching....

......more hand embroidery using silk threads, the result!

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Finished some bunting for the park Fun Day.....

.....made a card using my hand made silk, machine embroidery and beads.

More Experimenting!!

16th May 2015

I have been working on a few things the last couple of days....

I cut flower shapes from my indigo dyed silk and sandwiched between soluble film....

.....free machined using a variegated thread, silver and blue metallic....

.....made this with soluble and silk a few weeks ago, cut off a strip and glued to a small glass....

.....added 3 of the flowers and thought it would make a pretty tea light holder...

......this time used indigo dyed cotton lace.

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Making the cover for a hand made book, I have added machine embroidered organza flowers to the felted front.

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Just to let you know all my experiments are not successful!!

Using my embellisher to felt this lovely fleece, my gift from Julie, 

....after about an hour of adding fleece and silks this was the result.

.....next wet felted using olive soap and placed it over a bowl to dry...

.....the result. 

The felt is quite thin and no longer has texture so will be adding more fleece, threads, silk and machine embroidery to see if I can improve and produce a decent bowl!!!

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Enjoy your weekend and please do leave a comment....

A Meeting with a Blogger Friend!

13th May 2015

A busy week so far, Embroiderers Guild on Monday evening where I learnt a new stitch for a leaf and yesterday I went to Manchester on the train to meet Julie Broad, fellow blogger, for the first time. We had a brilliant day, first visited Fred Aldous, a large art/craft store then walked for about 20 mins to the Manchester Museum.....

....loved this at the entrance....

.....a beautiful building inside where old meets new in the displays....

....it was great to see art installations on the walls between the exhibits...

....apologies for the photos, I didn't think anything would come out as no flash allowed!

The butterflies are constructed from colourful fabric and loosely pinned to the wall so they cast shadows.

Paper/card sculpture was also used in some exhibit cases....

....so lovely.

Loved this way of displaying shells....

....fabulous patterns and colours in these stones....

.....there was also a conservation area where endangered species could be seen in their natural environment....

.....the children loved this area and trying to spot the frogs/lizards in the foliage!

Walking back to the station we passed so many interesting buildings and the University Campus...

...the shapes on this building were really intricate...

....the windows and chimneys were beautiful.

The entrance to China Town with wonderful food smells!

Julie very kindly gave me a 'bag of goodies....

 ...some of her lovely cards...

....you will see how these cards were made on her blog...

https://creatingtextiles.wordpress.com

....an interesting collection of fabrics....

....fleece and silk! It was like Christmas and I already have plans for some of it!!

We had a brilliant day and found we had a lot in common and plan another day out before too long!!

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I have covered a small 'Pink Pig' spiral notebook for a gift....

.....using my soluble fabric/free machined shape...

....padded the notebook cover, stitched the shape on indigo dyed fabric and stuck on....

.....my indigo cotton lace....

....stitched to cover the spiral! 

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A beautiful, sunny day so did a couple of hours in the park with fellow volunteers....

...all ages welcome....

....so many more plants in bloom tho week....

.....new Lavender plants....

....and the new bed is looking so good!

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Popped into the charity shops and bought this lovely linen cloth for £1 and 2 small glasses for decorated tea light holders for 10p.

Must sort tea out now as I have a meeting tonight!!!

The Third Bowl..

11th May 2015

This is very delicate, maybe because the organza isn't as thick as the silk was in the blue bowl,or maybe I rinsed the fabric too much....

.....upside down.

Think this would look good containing dried petals.